On Jan. 6, Lucy Vinis left office after serving eight years as Eugene’s mayor. 

Vinis opted not to run for reelection. She was replaced by longtime University of Oregon instructor and architect Kaarin Knudson, who she endorsed. 

Vinis said her favorite accomplishment as mayor was creating the Eugene Youth Advisory Council in 2020 for high school students to “learn more about the city government and weigh in on issues that concern them.”

Vinis said her work over eight years as mayor includes major accomplishments in homelessness, housing, public safety, transportation and climate. 

“We passed the transportation system plan (and) the (Community Safety Payroll Tax). We have invested in a range of solutions to homelessness, including coordinating with the county for a permanent Shelter Navigation Center (and) our own Safe Sleep sites that we set up to help people get into a better setting off the street to transition into housing,” Vinis said. “We’ve invested in zoning changes to enable us to get on top of our housing needs. We’ve adopted a Climate Action Plan 2.0. We’ve passed renter protections to help people stabilize in their housing.”

Navigating challenges during a pandemic

During the coronavirus pandemic, Vinis said that the city did “double duty” by continuing to move Eugene forward amidst the global pandemic. 

“We did double duty [during COVID]. We adopted our Climate Action Plan in 2020 in the middle of COVID. We completed a brand new city park along the Riverfront District during COVID in time for the Oregon 2022 World Athletics Championships,” Vinis said. “We did all of the work that we were going to do anyway on road infrastructure, refurbishing parks, swimming pools and developing a new Riverfront District … (while) also (addressing) challenges of COVID.”

Homelessness was the toughest challenge

Vinis said the toughest challenge that the city faced when she was mayor was addressing homelessness. In Eugene, Vinis said that homelessness is a housing problem. 

“The fact is that we live in a community (where) there’s a huge gap between the wages and the cost of living,” Vinis said. 

Vinis said the city has made significant progress in addressing homelessness. 

When she first came into office in 2017, Vinis said the city had 200 shelter beds and one person working part-time for the city on homelessness. Now, she said that the city has more than 1,000 beds, a sophisticated homeless services team that works across different city departments, a permanent Shelter Navigation Center in collaboration with Lane County and several Safe Sleep sites throughout the city. 

“I think the city has been extraordinarily innovative and successful in developing alternative sheltering programs,” Vinis said. “Our Safe Sleep sites … (have been) very successful.”

“I think we’re a leader in the state and often a leader in the nation in terms of the kinds of models that we’ve developed here,” Vinis added. 

However, despite the city’s efforts to address homelessness over her tenure, Vinis acknowledged it remains an escalating issue in Eugene.

“We’ve done an enormous amount of work and yet we have not as a county, state or nation actually been able to stem the flow,” Vinis said. “Even though we’re serving more people, better than ever before, there are more people falling into homelessness (in Eugene) than ever before.”

In Eugene, Vinis said that homelessness is “kind of too great and beyond the city’s capacity to address.”

Earlier in her tenure, Vinis said she was hopeful that Eugene would be on the path to better address homelessness, but the pandemic made it harder.

“I was guardedly optimistic in 2018 and 2019 that we might be on the pathway to having a more robust program that would address (homelessness), (but) the pandemic just made that even harder,” Vinis said.

Vinis’ approach to her work as mayor

Reflecting on her approach to her work as mayor, Vinis said she prioritized mutual respect and understanding, even in moments of disagreement.  

“I have always approached the work by just assuming that your colleagues are trying to do their best work for the community,” Vinis said. “If you start from that place, even if you disagree with them, you’re more inclined to listen to them carefully and be respectful of their ideas and opinions.”

Learning from setbacks: Eugene’s natural gas ban

In July 2023, the Eugene City Council repealed an ordinance banning natural gas hookups in new low-rise residential construction that the council approved five months earlier. The now repealed ordinance sought to reduce greenhouse emissions and improve air quality. The council decided to repeal the ordinance and step back because of a successful legal challenge to a similar ban in Berkley, California, Vinis said.

Reflecting on the now repealed ordinance, Vinis said there is wisdom in knowing when to step back and change direction.

“When you’re in city government, you make choices based on your priorities and your urgent needs and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” Vinis said. “There’s wisdom [being in] elected office and recognizing it’s not going to work and you don’t want to continue pushing it. You need to step back and try a different strategy.”

Vinis said the city council’s decision to repeal the ordinance allowed for a stronger focus on community engagement around decarbonization efforts.

“The positive part about that is that when we did step back we were able to turn (more of) our focus on community engagement,’” Vinis said. “[We had] our staff meet with different communities, business sectors and members of the community to talk about, ‘How do we decarbonize? What does that actually look like in order to meet our climate goal?’”

Black Lives Matter protests 

In the summer of 2020, as the Black Lives Matter protests drew thousands of protestors and sparked riots in Eugene, Vinis found herself confronting a city in turmoil.

“I was reelected a week before George Floyd was murdered and our city was torn by nightly demonstrations. I remember reaching out to young Black leaders in weekly meetings that summer asking what it would take for us to turn the corner from demonstrations to change on the ground,” Vinis said in an exit interview with the Eugene City Club. “We turned that corner by convening a searching, painful, and often angry Ad Hoc Committee on police policies to scrutinize and recommend changes to better and more fairly serve our Black, Indigenous, and people of color community.”

Vinis’ legacy

Amid the challenges of the past eight years: a global pandemic, racial justice protests, and devastating wildfires, Vinis said that she is proud that she was able to help the city navigate through all of the turmoil. 

“My greatest legacy is that I helped this city navigate all of (the) turmoil. We still continued to move forward on the important work that needed to happen,” Vinis said. “We didn’t lose our way. We didn’t lose our vision. We didn’t fall apart with disagreement over the next path forward. The city council continued to function well (and) the city government continued to function well.”